In certain types of businesses, people and/or companies generally need to acquire certain materials and/or services from others before they can provide a product or service to their own clients or customers. Examples of such businesses include building construction contractors and subcontractors; for example, an electrical subcontractor first acquires the necessary materials before he or she can install the electrical system at a job site. In obtaining the necessary materials and/or services, these businesses incur expenses, which are traditionally passed along (at least partially) to their clients/customers. For example, a subcontractor passes along his or her expenses to the general contractor, who passes along his or her expenses to the ultimate customer, e.g., a homeowner.
Such businesses commonly use invoices to record and pass along the expenses to their customers or clients. An invoice is a commercial document issued by a business person or entity to memorialize a sales or services transaction. Typically, an invoice indicates a product sold or service rendered by the provider of the service or product, a quantity, an agreed transaction amount for the service or product, and payment terms.
The process of tracking and recording expenses and generating invoices for the expenses can be tedious and time consuming for owners of such businesses. Even with the help of modern computer software designed to facilitate invoice generation, this process can be very burdensome, since a business owner still must manually collect all of the transaction receipts from purchases of materials and/or services, and then input the data from those receipts into a computer for invoice generation. The time spent on tracking, recording, and even data collection and data entry for invoice generation detracts from time that the business owner could otherwise spend in more profitable or more enjoyable ways.